Severed (2002)

Vicious psycho the Baron (hulking behemoth Nehemiah) goes on a gruesome decapitation spree in a major city. The police hire rugged bounty hunter Blake (flatly played with all the charisma of moldy cheese by Peter Reh) to stop the loony. Sound good? Well, it just ain't. Boy, does this mind-numbing crapfest strike out something rotten in every possible way: The limp (non)direction, the plodding pace, a dull and talky script, the laughably fake and cheesy gore, the lousy acting from a lame no-name cast, the total dearth of any tension or creepy atmosphere, the plain and poorly lit cinematography, the generic hum'n'shiver synthesizer score, the ineptly staged action scenes, and the annoying and dissatisfying "it ain't over yet!" ending all add up to one seriously beat flick. Only the lively climactic confrontation between Blake and the Baron manages to generate a few long overdue thrills, but it's much too little way too late. A real stinker.

There was nothing about this movie that I liked. It was so obviously low-budget with bad lighting and camera work (almost like Blair Witch Project, only it wasn't supposed to be that way). There wasn't really much to the plot, and the movie just drug on and on. I actually fast-forwarded through the last 1/3 of the movies, but that did not help matters much. It looked like it might be good from the box, but I must say again: nothing about this movie even resembled good. No good actors, the special effects were so fake, the camera work was horrible, and the dialogue was painfully terrible. On my own personal scale, I give this movie a 0 of 10. Yikes!

If you wish to produce your own feature, please pause a moment to take in the intoxicating brilliance of 'Severed'. I am glad I own a copy of this DVD for my own personal collection, so I may review it at my leisure when I feel particularly low in my fine-culture fuel tank.As a film about Coup de Etat attempts in Eastern Europe, I find 'Severed' to be both insightful and magically realistic. Certainly it's producers have in depth knowledge of behind-the-scenes political machinations and bring them to bear metaphorically in the form of a deranged mass decapitator loose in society. It is refreshing to see such high-brow culturally hedgmonic ideas come to bear in low-budget fare. As a result I carry my copy of 'Severed' with me while lecturing in the former Eastern Bloc "Schools Du Cinema" and have shown excerpts on my Austrian talk show "Cinemachten es Machinen du Changen Regimen!!!"The picture bears witness to the director's mistrust of the instability often caused by the political vaccum left following a Coup. As an uber-marxist multicultural talisman of the zeitgeist present in collective schemas, 'Severed' performs admirably supplanting the role of neo-camp metadata with a post-modern serial killer/police procedural Brechtian signpost with Plathian undertones. Of course, none of this is particularly profound as it should be obvious to the most casual of viewers.To be fair, the film has it's downpoints. The acting is a notch below that of your low-budget local cable commercial, and to say the film is directed as unevenly as a 3-legged table is insulting to 3-legged tables everywhere. However you can not completely fault a film as nakedly ambitious and political as this.As such, I highly recommend 'Severed' between sips of triple-chai-mocha-goat's milk-latte and as a break from a steady diet of Nietzche. Severed from my copy of 'Severed'? Ye Gods, don't let this come to pass!!

To be brutally honest... I LOVED watching Severed. That's why Igave it a 1/10 stars because of its starkly unimaginativestory/filming/acting/everything. This film was a RIOT to watch. Ifyou enjoy watching bad films in order to poke fun at them, you willreally get a kick out of Severed.The story really doesn't matter, it involves some guy who's baldand has a sword and goes around beheading random people. But he has a supernatural twist... nobody ever sees him do it. Even when, in one very memorable scene, he walks into ajampacked night club and whacks off some girl's noodle andnobody sees it. Severed doesn't merely look like it was filmed on video- it WASfilmed on someone's home camcorder. The filmmakers hadknowledge of lighting (very thin knowledge) and compositionactually holds together in some scenes. But mostly you can't hearthe actors... you can't understand what they're doing, and you laughwhen the next vicitm gets his pumpkin detatched from his body.Go and rent this movie. Support films like this- they are a hoot anda hollar!